Jonathan Greenblatt is the man trying to shut down extremists online

Fifty years ago, extremists were hiding behind hoods and burning crosses. Today, they’re hiding behind avatars and burning up Twitter. So Jonathan Greenblatt is evolving the century-old Anti-Defamation League to fight white supremacy, anti-Semitism and other forms of extremism in the digital age.

“We shouldn’t be surprised that extremists exploit new media,” says Greenblatt. With his guidance, the tech and media industries are taking a more proactive role in combating hate and extremists on their platforms. ADL is now working directly with engineers at tech companies like Twitter to solve problems with code rather than lawsuits.

His next focus: Using artificial intelligence to automatically sanitize platforms of extremism, rather than relying on humans to filter it all out.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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